Tuxedo Park Is Still A Button-down Town

May 22, 1986|By Elizabeth Kolbert, New York Times

TUXEDO PARK, N.Y. — One hundred years ago this fall Griswold Lorillard created a sartorial sensation by appearing at the first autumn ball here with the tails of his dinner jacket lopped off. But to Tuxedo Park, the exclusive, gated town that gave men's formal wear its name, the tuxedo's centennial is nothing to celebrate.

''People would just like to forget it,'' said Frank Howard, a longtime resident of the park who now lives at the Tuxedo Club, the country club where Lorillard made history.

Indeed, to the 300 families of Tuxedo Park, 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, the tuxedo's centennial has brought nothing but a lot of unwanted attention. A television crew that requested permission to film a tribute to the tuxedo in the park was turned down. The American Formalwear Association, which wanted to honor its raison d'etre at the Tuxedo Club, was politely shown the gate.

But then, Tuxedo Park has always been ambivalent about its namesake. ''When I was a kid, people never called it a tuxedo,'' said Howard, who grew up in the park in the 1930s. ''It was always a dinner jacket.'' And while many Americans may consider a tuxedo the most appropriate outfit to wear to the altar, ''there's nothing worse in the eyes of a Tuxedan than a tuxedo for a wedding,'' Howard said. ''You wear a morning coat.''

This year marks the centennial not only of the tuxedo but also of Tuxedo Park itself. The park, which was built as an off-season retreat where families such as the Juilliards, Pells and Astors could while away the weeks between Newport and Palm Beach, was inaugurated with just the right amount of hoopla in May 1886.

Local legend has it that there had not been so much as a plan for the park until eight months earlier, when Lorillard's father, Pierre, visited the site with architect Bruce Price and sketched his modest proposal for the place -- a few ''cottages'' of 20 rooms or so, a clubhouse and a gate, a sewer system and 30 miles of road. With 1,800 laborers imported from Italy and Eastern Europe, the park was completed by spring.

Among the elite, the park caught on quickly, and soon millionaires were vying to outdo one another with mansions that made the park look like an open- air museum spanning several centuries of European architecture. There are Gothic halls and colonial manors, English country houses and French chateaux. Some of the more spectacular mansions sit on Tuxedo Lake; the others are tucked away more discreetly in the park's 2,300 acres of wooded hills.

In the 1920s, Emily Post, who spent several seasons in Tuxedo Park, is said to have learned here what good manners were all about.

By the 1930s, though, many of the fortunes that built Tuxedo Park had collapsed, and mysterious fires consumed several estates. For decades, many mansions sat unoccupied and unmaintained.

Tuxedo Park saw a revival in the 1960s, when it charmed new residents with its dilapidated opulence and falling real estate prices. Local officials say that the last abandoned mansion found a new owner only four years ago.

The town of Tuxedo surrounds Tuxedo Park -- an incorporated village -- and originally was built to house its laborers. In the town, no one is too surprised that the public has not been invited into the park to celebrate this centennial.

''You have to understand the attitude of a parkie,'' said John McCarthy, supervisor of the town of Tuxedo. ''The old serfdom still exists.''

Within the park, there are no commercial establishments that might give outsiders an excuse to come in. All stores are in the town. Many of the people in the town still work for those who live within the park's gate, and the two groups view each other accordingly, McCarthy said. ''A sociologist would be in seventh heaven here,'' he said.

The gatehouse built 100 years ago sits next to the only entrance to the park, and a guard there jots down the license numbers of visitors with legitimate business and turns away those with none. Despite appearances, residents say Tuxedo Park is no longer the exclusive enclave of old New York society it once was.

''We can't live up to the millionaire status,'' added Fritz Bell, Tuxedo Park's mayor, who said he is not a millionaire himself. ''Overall, the general population is hard-working commuters.''

According to the mayor, at least half the park's residents came during the last few decades and bought houses with price tags that reflected years of neglect. Bell counts himself among this group; he bought his house, which has 10 bedrooms and nine fireplaces, in 1969 for $40,000.

In contrast to the 1920s, there are now a number of Catholics and Jews living in the park, and these residents agree that things are changing. Some of them have been allowed to join the Tuxedo Club, once the exclusive preserve of the socially prominent, who once dictated that only club residents could be park residents.

''There's no pedigree there anymore,'' said one Jewish resident. ''If you sound BBC enough, you can get in.''